Lock and Key
by golden starfish
Summary: Sam’s powers developed not once Dean died, but because Dean died. Spoilers up to and including 4x09.


**Warnings:** Spoilers up to and including 4x09  
**Summary :** Sam's powers developed not once Dean died, but _because_ Dean died.  
**A/N:** Many thanks to rhetorical_love for the beta. Concrit is especially loved.

**  
Lock and Key**

-+-

Dean's vacant stare broke something inside him, really broke, he felt it go quick and sharp like a guitar string snapping. The raw power surged from him, leaving his mind shattered and disjointed, but Dean was still dead; his skin cold, his blood congealed on Sam's hands and _dead_.

-+-

It took weeks of failed training to realize he couldn't just want something to happen; he couldn't even_ really_ want something to happen. It wasn't about that at all. So it was chance, a fluke, maybe fate, that when he was failing at yet another exorcism he thought in despair:

_'I couldn't save you from the pit and I can't even do this.'_

And the demon flowed out of the old man so suddenly Sam barely had a chance to blink before he went blind and deaf in a flash of white and searing agony.

Breaths stuttered. Stopped. Restarted. Heart fluttering.

And the pain eventually began to come in waves, slower and slower ebbing away until he could finally hear the rasping breaths, his, harsh in the silence. And then he could see the body lying still on the floor at Ruby's feet.

Now he knew, Dean was the key.

-+-

He practiced; tried to channel his grief when he raised his hand and splayed his fingers but he was drowning in it, he couldn't channel it, he couldn't even contain it. Wherever he went, he left a trail of agony, hurt, failure and broken bottles in his wake.

It wasn't bad enough that every time he closed his eyes he saw Dean's decaying,_ dead_, body just before he'd nailed the lid onto the coffin; now he had to _consciously_ think of it.

-+-

What little of the pervasive aching and heart wrenching pain he could focus on was enough though; he could now exorcise demons with thought alone.

It came at a price, like everything in his life,_ like_ his life, period. It tore at his heart and his head and made every time feel like that first moment when he took in the pool of blood and Dean lying still.

So after another exorcism it didn't matter much to Sam when Ruby started pressing something under his nose, he just sat slumped against the wall where he'd fallen, utterly exhausted and empty. He felt the blood running,_ running,_ down his face from his nose and his ears and faintly hoped it was bad enough to kill him, but knew it wasn't.

-+-

And then Dean was back, and the exorcisms were different, harder. The grief still choked him but just seeing his brother each day, driving the Impala, talking, joking, asleep in the motel, alive, _alive,_ distracted him enough that he couldn't focus. He couldn't pull the demons straight out, he couldn't hold them still and he couldn't taunt them and tell them how he was coming for Lilith soon. Now, he'd returned to the nose bleeds and blinding pain of the early days.

Sure, he tried to tell himself he was doing some good, and he mostly believed it too, they'd saved some lives, but every exorcism still burnt him. They burnt away at his soul.

He didn't want to practice or train or whatever the hell Ruby wanted to call it. He didn't want to think about how every moment without Dean was pure agony. So when the time came and he was sitting in the car with Dean, it was easy enough to say he didn't want to use his powers, and for it to be true.

-+-

And then there was Samhain. The overwhelming, near infinite, blackness of loss and anger he needed to touch upon to exorcise Samhain left him shaking, clutching at Dean as his legs gave out. He held on like Dean was the last piece of a wrecked ship still bobbing on the ocean's surface; the dying embers of power from the exorcism still prickled and sparked under his skin.

Light sent piercing pains through Sam's head, always had after an exorcism, but he forced his eyes open, squinted at Dean's frowning face. Sam had to see him, he had to. Because Dean might have been_ there _but in his head Dean was still staring at the ceiling and flopping limply in Sam's arms,_ dead._

"Hey, Sam. What's wrong?"

He didn't realize he was crying until Dean's arms circled him and there was a gentle hand on his back pressing him against Dean's chest.

"It's okay. I've got you. It's okay, Sammy."

But it wasn't okay; it could never be again. Now that he'd opened himself up to his powers he couldn't do a damn thing to erase the knowledge that scarred his mind. He just prayed that the image of Dean's corpse and the feeling of cold dead skin under his fingers would go away and leave him alone with _this_ Dean, a warm, alive, worried Dean. And he prayed that maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.


End file.
